I am extremely sensitive to place.
Perhaps my Irish background, with both sets of grandparents only a few miles from each other, shaped me that way. This includes the flora & fauna, the ancestors and the spirits of a place. My poetry is poetry of place, grounded in seasonal settings and the particulars of location.
This is why my poetry over the past twenty-two years is Hawaiʻi-based. It’s also why I dance Kupuna Hula.
Poetry is my life.
Both my grandfathers were poets. I’m simply following their lead. I’ve never stopped writing poetry. I’ve published in small presses, but the bulk of my current published poetry was self-published (under the aegis of the Inkwells, a writing group I belong to here in Kohala, Hawai’i Island).
I am the shadow - 5-25-23
I am the shadow, following, falling, shape-shifting, in the trees, flickering, on the move, tight against the light, upright and down…go on, turn a corner, turn left at the next doorway, turn out the light, you’ll never lose me. There, at the edge of the bed, a ghost passing in front of the lamp…go ahead, I’ll be waiting, or better yet, on the out-breath, go ahead ahead, count to five, that’s me in the labyrinth, all those doors leading nowhere, all that running, like you’re in water. You think me, me, me, as if you’re it. You’re all persona, as if I didn’t exist. A shadow-ist. You barely give me a second glance. Wake up. There is no glance without me.
The Light
1
Beginning is such a precipice
morning such a hungry dog
give it a small piece of venison
from your left pocket & it spends
the next minutes at your feet
breathing deeply you confront
the Marzocco its stainless steel
the red cups upside down while
in the background modulations
with young voices declare love pain
Birthday Poem
After breakfast we walked, skirting a gate and its NO
TRESPASSING sign. Our dogs off-leash, running ahead
—like the way our fingers learn how to see again—
over close-cropped grasses
in an old cane grass trucking corridor;
slowing and swerving wherever a scent
laid down before
speaks to them; pulls
their noses into shadows.
We slowly followed.
Turn The Wheel
Turn the wheel hand over hand sunlight
between too much thinking and reverse
or three point turn pointing me faced
due east October low horizon offering
to the sun the sun through windmill
blades a turning cutting spinning
that's usefully collecting electricity
Dear Ben Franklin look how far we've come
Driven To The Dram By Carol Ann Duffy
“Whisky you’re me darlin’ you’re leadin’ me astray
over hills and mountains and very far away” to the extent
that I was reading a poem of Carol Ann Duffy’s two days
nay nights ago already had my quota of the craythur
rose up from the chair went to the cabinet and extracted
another wee drop just one more for the short little
roads of the poem there in the lap just one more
for the twists and turns of the poet’s mind
Flash Of White
Children's voices cross the ocean cross
the ocean to the island to the ground
solid as imagination will allow
there is no heaven but what's in us
then she's gone leaving me here
with a fourth wall oddly like
a computer screen press enter
in the corner of my eye a movement
can shadows be pure like children's
laughter or summer linen laid across
As If He Were
As if he were the moon he pulled gently
the stalks the stems the leaves that follow
the flowers their pistils the stamen teased
coaxed with his long ethereal fingers
day or night even when his powers waned
a slim curvature of light but he was
not the moon she realized and she
lay down with the wind in a ditch
Jack Lives At The Beach
Jack lives at the beach. Breaking waves
are his night music. Taking long strolls
along the tide lines his morning news.
Sand turns up in his trouser cuffs, boots
outside his door. Bright debris
tumbled in the lapidary of the shore
till edges soften over time among the stones
find their broken state renewed
like dragon's hoard in flower pots.
The Flash Of The Matrix
It's got the ocean in it she says.
He moves closer to see the sea in her necklace.
She catches his breath. Not unpleasant.
An achievement for anyone over 40 she thinks.
What was he thinking? Hopefully nothing.
Hopefully she had intercepted whatever
passed between head and heart and
back again. Just breathe indeed.
Thinking Of The Other Side
Thinking of the other side of the other's
I'd like to talk with the others eyed by
my inner mind the Oh There! sighed
chin to palm to elbow head alea
and aloft clouds soft and whereabouts
suspended in the mountains nothing
to tell the messenger who waits
but for the resident frog's silence
all last night as if this stillness
stopped his grumbling for once
The Other Side
I had to ask but you're in charge.
I let that happen, didn't I. Out there
in the corner of the other room our food
gets prepared. I scratch my head.
Our elbows shush their way across
open spaces. Motors run louder than usual.
Must be the bakery. I've got two avocadoes
but they're the other side of ripe. I'm still here
in my body but I forget from moment to moment.
Patient
Today we sat in the surgeon's waiting room 55 minutes after the scheduled appointment time, missing almost an hour of hula, the last hula session of 2013. Our conversation ran the gamut from Bill Cosby's greeting for a very late doctor: No. Sorry. You can't come in. You have to wait out there till I'm ready...to Seinfeld's, Let's see, 55 minutes, rounded up to an hour of my time, that'll be $125 (I'm cheap. Those are teacher substitute rates from 1999).
30 minutes past time, we were saying, Okay, another five minutes and that's it. Five minutes came and one of us went to the secretary, who said, Oh he just came in, he'll be right there. 45 minutes into the empty, soulless closet with the Thai batik of a man playing a flute to a small herd of goats, we decided to walk out and ask for the $30 copay back.
On Seeing Julia’s Work In Progress
ON SEEING JULIA'S WORK IN PROGRESS
Up on Beers Road the artist woke up one
morning rising from bunched and wrinkled
dreams and walked out before someone
she thought she knew too well could catch up
this is how she found the light behind
the ordinary the way shadows tell time
what to do as they move over the ground
we see her crouching here hand reaching
This Time
"When you get up in the morning, smooth out the shape of your body from the bed."
Thank you Pythagoras for your hypotenuse of the dream
the triangulation of mind body spirit in a field of 300 count Egyptian cotton.
Even the sunrise holds the shadows in high esteem
saying words such as new and day and break.
Like the hollow forms in the ash of Vesuvius
the puzzles we leave behind are empty.
Crystals And Water
CRYSTALS AND WATER
How is it possible, this breaking open? Finding
perfect facets clustered, teasing us with mystery.
And think of this, the first vibration upon which
everything is built, recorded here, frozen.
The flood, the great battle on the plains
and the greatest love story, all here. The ark,
Kupuna Hula
Last night the rain came in.
Lying there I knew that could have been us.
The way we met: land, cloud, their heat
exchanging day for night. It found me this morning
out here in the pasture getting ready
to tell this story, how we got this far
and step this way, sweep one foot across
the threshold, hold our arms out to each other
thus and thus. We turn one side. A hand flutters
close to the mouth. We’ve come this far, we say.
I Gave It All Away
Ah! Secrets! Gave those away
but usually paid the price.
Virginity you ask? Do men give
that away? Don’t we just...
Oh, never mind, I suppose
I did give mine but I think I gave it to me
very carefully after 24 hours consideration
of her question Well? Are we